DELTA AMATEUR RADIO CLUB SPARKS Web Edition SPARKS P.O. BOX 750482 MEMPHIS, TN 38175-0482 / VOL. 13 / SEPTEMBER 2001 W 4 B S R E P E A T E R S Y S T E M 146.82, 147.36, 224.42, 443.2 & 145.03 Packet PRESIDENT'S PAGE DO IT YOURSELF Part of the rich lore and tradition of amateur radio is experimentation. In the early days of radio communication, the experimenters had to pretty much “roll their own” parts, including making capacitors, winding coils and transformers, and adapting various pieces of hardware for radio communication. And it was these early enthusiasts who pioneered the short wave communication frequencies which allow us to have world-wide communications. When the frequencies above 200 meters were allocated to ham radio operators, they were “given” to our predecessors because it was the prevailing scientific thought of the time that these frequencies were useless for communication. Guess who proved that wrong! When I was first licensed in 1960, lots of hams built their own equipment, either from kits or by buying the required parts and putting together their own “kits.” Rigs were big and point-to-point wiring was common. Why we even had to tune and load our own transmitters…no automatic, one-button tuning. Have things ever changed and evolved in the past forty-one years! I greatly admire anyone who has the technical expertise to try to effect any sort of substantial repairs on one of our modern rigs. I now need a magnifier just to examine the thing! There is a special sense of satisfaction in making a contact on equipment that you built yourself. There are a few kits available now for some pretty complex rigs; but perhaps of more interest to the majority of us, there are some fairly simple QRP kits available that are not beyond the construction capabilities of most of us. These rigs are not terribly expensive and have the potential for producing much satisfaction and enjoyment from their construction and later use, in addition to learning some more about electronics and ham radio. We have several members interested in this sort of activity and perhaps we can get a SIG (Special Interest Group) going in this regard. Any takers?? Another area of “homebrewing” that can be extremely rewarding is antenna building. My biggest thrill in ham radio was my first DX contact using both a transmitter and an antenna that I had built. “Rolling your own” antennas is an easy way of having something of your own creation as part of your station, and it does not have to be expensive. Wire is cheap, at least relatively so. Would you believe that you can build a 2 element monoband beam for HF work and with about 5 db gain for under twenty dollars? You can – been there and done that. Building antennas for VHF work even requires less materials, at least for the most part. In an effort to spark some interest in antenna building and experimentation, KB4KA and I will try to build a high performance 2 meter beam at the September meeting. The antenna is called a QUAGI as it combines cubical quad and yagi elements. I’ve built 2 of these little “beasties” and have had fantastic performance from them. This is a project that requires no special tools and uses readily available materials. Total cost…under $20.00. Hope I’ve perked your interest. See you at the September meeting. 73, K4TTA VE CORNER Summer, though it sure doesn't feel like it, is almost gone. The children are back to school and so our driving needs to have more caution and alertness. With the closing of summer and the approach of fall maybe our testing sessions won't be quite as warm. The air conditioner in the upstairs part of the meeting building seems not to be working. I get there between 4 and 4:30 to turn on the air, set up tables and chairs, and get the overall testing session organized. A bit of relaxation between my work and the testing session and we are ready to go!!! Thank you to the following VEs who help with this month’s session: Arlene AA5GX, Don KJ4PO, Francis WA4ZYN, and Frank KA4SJM. I have now placed Frank in his proper state. He asked me last time if I was trying to tell him that he should move since I kept on giving him a 5 call! No Frank I've put you back in the greater Memphis area. Congratulations to those that attended the August session. We had 8 people test, attempting 8 elements, passing all 8. We gained 4 new Technicians, 1 new General and 2 new Extra Class operators. The next testing session is September 12. Remember that preprogrammed calculators and any device that copies Morse Code are unacceptable at any testing session. Bring a copy of your license and identification along with a copy of any CSCE that you may have. A CSCE is only good for 365 days. After the 365 you must retake that part of the exam already passed in order to get an upgrade. This is of particular importance to those seeking a General License. ALSO if you have passed CW with your technician class, bring a copy of that CSCE since the FCC no longer issues a Tech Plus license. Congratulations to: Peter Baskind AG4KI Extra (formerly KG4OGX) David Craig AD5FG Extra (formerly KD5OPP) Leon Griffin, Jr KG4OYB Technician Edward Lacrouts KG4OYC Technician Roger Mayhugh KD5PNY Technician Anthony Montedonico KG4OYD Technician Noel Pennington KD4SDE General Respectfully submitted, Joan Thorne KN4PM ARRL VE Liaison SEPTEMBER MEETING TOPIC What’s a Quagi, you may ask? According to Tom, K4TTA, is’s a fantastic antenna, easy to build with no special tools, using readily available materials - all for less than $20.00! Got your attention? Come to the September meeting and watch Tom and Terry, KB4KA, build one right before your eyes! CENTRAL STATES VHF CONFERENCE REPORT JULY 26-29 I drove down to Dallas, TX, for the Central States VHF Conference July 26-29. I just couldn't get enough of that good old heat and sunshine. If I had gotten there early Thursday, July 26, I could have caught Kent Britain, WA5VJB's famous SURPLUS Tour, I'm sure any Ham's delight! When one goes to these conferences, you pay your fee and receive a conference proceedings. This is a collection of the papers that the presenters use to make presentations to the conference, a reference book on the conference. Some are a refresher, some are new and interesting projects-in-progress. Early Friday morning the antenna range was set up. Marc,WB0TEM set up the 6m-432 Mhz range and Kent, WA5VJB, set up the 902 Mhz – 24 Ghz antenna range. I had taken a 432-1296 log periodic antenna that Gene, KD4JKJ, had given me several years ago, just to see how it stood up against regular yagi 3 and 4 element beams in these frequencies. It fared pretty well. It had a average gain of 8.7 across 432-1296. As you probably gathered I really enjoy building antennas. I had to have a home brew 902 antenna, since I hadn't built one of those, so I built a Kent, WA5VJB, design made from a 1/4” x 1” x 36” piece of wood and some #10 and #12 copper wire. I didn't have any RF to tune it up with, but I thought I'd throw it together and see what happened. Well for an 8 element 902 beam, it had a gain of 12.1db. I guess I came pretty close. I did use a dial indicator caliper (a very precise ruler) to build it. These series of antennas, called “cheap yagis” are very reproducible. Also if anyone wants a copy of antennas tested at this conference, I will make a copy for you. There were about 80 antennas tested from 50 Mhz – 24 Ghz. There also is a pre-amp "contest" that goes on about the same time as the antenna range is going. There were some very impressive pre-amps there. I think the lowest one there was a .05 noise figure, with a 21.4 db gain. Not bad for a room temp pre-amp. After the antenna range & pre-amp contests are done, the conference really begins. Amateurs from California to Ohio to Canada are there to present their topics. The subjects range from pre-amp design, to as far out as SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and there were some there with quite a lot of intelligence about VHF and above. These conferences are a gathering of some of the best in their field of VHF and above. I would say that between 60-70 percent are in the RF field as a job. The conference continued on through Saturday. The final banquet was Saturday night. Joel Harrison, W5ZN, gave a talk on “The Power of Cheese”. It was more of a challenge he gave to keep our frequencies. He was saying that there are folks out there that are trying to take part of our “cheese”, and if we don't protect and use our frequencies/cheese, we'll lose them. I ended up with some really nice prizes from the banquet and enjoyed Joel's talk on “Cheese”. These conferences are one of the ways someone with no RF background can get some “free” training from some pro's in the field. There are conferences for Digital, DX, QRP - just about any subject for amateur radio.